Sounds with an Indian accent - made, played or waylaid by Punita Singh. From her base in New Delhi, India, Singh explores sound in multiple contexts, as music, language, art and science. Our thanks to Peter Nagy for coordinating this effort.

Here are some notes from about the tracks on this program:

One piece dates back to the pre-digital age of electroacoustic music in the early 80s. Most of the sounds were designed and performed by Punita on an ARP 2500 analog synthesizer using "low frequency oscillators" to control "voltage controlled filters" and such, to create evolving textures of sound. The piece is loosely set in raga Bhairav. The piano part was played live, improvising with the pre-recorded backtrack featuring electronic sounds interspersed with acoustic tabla and cowbells.

Another track is a piecing together of disparate bits of speech and song, replete with sexual innuendo. Fragments of popular Bollywood movie sons interplay with other spicy bits in a linearly crooked way.

One song uses a song by Indian pop idol Faakhir - mahi ve (dearly beloved). Turn the sounds around to listen to it straight up!. The intent of this piece was to explore the impact of time reversal on the attacks and decays of words and tones. The reversed speech sounds could well be legitimate within the phonetic of another language. The abrupt onsets of flipped tonal and percussive sounds are disturbing at first, but interestingly, maintain both rhythm and pitch of the piece.

Punita and Ghulam Ahmed engage in some vocal, rhythmic, metric exercises in a piece set in "teen tala" (16 beats).

What is the girl from Ipanema doing on an Indian soundtrack?: Well, she's brought to Indian ears at the colonial Gymkhana club in New Delhi, underscoring the eclectic multi-cultural mixes of our times. A mostly Goan live band (Rocky on drums, Melvin on keyboards, Tony on trumpet, Keith on bass / lead guitar, Punita on congas) gave Delhi a flavour of cha-cha, samba, beguine, mambo and, of course - the bossanova, on Wednesday nights for many years.

Sufi mystic, brilliant poet - Bulle Shah seems to be discovered afresh by ever generation. In this piece, Pakistan's Abida Parveen and Indian's Rabbi Shergill present their take on beloved Bulla.

Invite artists from all over the world to India and send them off to a little town in Uttar Pradesh for two weeks. What do you get? An assortment of accents. The sounds of Hindi and Brazilian songs playing while artists hammer and chisel and paint and paste, cleaners sweep, cooks cool. Fun and frustration. Creativity and chaos. AN "open day" when locals come to view the works create in their milieu, and on this occasion, participate as well, in an impromptu percussion jam around a hollowed tree "drum". This acoustic collage is a literal record of the workshop.